2954: How to Lose Fat Without Losing Muscle (The Exact Strategy)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MindPump. MindPump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in history, approaching over half a billion downloads. This is MindPump. Today's episode, we had callers call in, and we got to coach them on air. Four people called in. We helped them out with their health and fitness. But this was after the intro, so today's intro was 60 minutes long. Now, in the intro, we talk about how to burn body fat without losing muscle. We talked about GLPs and their benefits and some of the weird effects that they have. We talked about strength training. We also told some personal stories. Look, if you want to be on an episode like this where you can call in and get helped out by us, send an email to mplivecaller.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Dose. 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It's 40% off, plus we'll throw in a free MAPS program, Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy, and we'll throw in a diet guide and a supplement guide, all for free. Go to MAPSabsandbutt.com. Use the code MAPS for the discount and the free stuff. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, you want to get lean, but you don't want to lose muscle. Of course not. We're going to talk about how you can cut the fat and keep the muscle. We're going to break it down. This works. Let's go. Maybe one of the hardest things to do. It is. It's a very difficult to do. The reason why it's difficult to do, besides the fact that people don't do what we're about to discuss, because the things that we're going to cover here greatly reduce the odds that you'll lose muscle. The reason why your body wants to lose muscle when you're losing weight is because your body is trying to adapt to the new caloric intake. When you're eating less, your body wants to learn how to adjust to that lower intake. It's no different than you making less money and trying to figure out how to fit your lifestyle with your new paycheck. You have to cut expenses and stuff like that. Muscle is very adaptable. Your body can pare it down quite easily. If you've ever had a cast on or a sling on for a week, you know how fast you can lose muscle and how it can adapt in that direction. Your body will pare muscle down to slow things down, to match the metabolic demands with the caloric intake. It's much more complex than that, but that's basically where it starts. It's also trying to adapt to the stimulus that you're doing also, which I feel like we get wrong many times in this. I can't tell you how many times I see somebody who decides they want to reduce body fat, go in a cut, and they ramp up intensity, activity, more cardio. We'll get there for sure. Yeah. The body's also trying to adapt to the stimulus that you're doing. What type of body is most conducive for this thing that you're going to do? You pair that with your point of it's trying to adapt to the calories that you're giving it to it, right? It needs to get more efficient. Then it's also trying to adapt to what kind of stimulus are you doing? Well, so here's a good question. Are there forms of exercise or performance adaptations that don't lend themselves well to more muscle? In other words, is it beneficial for certain physical endeavors to not have big muscles? And the answer to that is, of course. Yes. Absolutely. So a good example is this really long distance running or endurance. You can see the top, top athletes in the world who already have a propensity to maintain muscle, by the way. Even endurance athletes at that level have a propensity to keep muscle. If you look at the way they look, and not saying this is the perfect way to measure things, but if you look the way they look, they don't have a lot of muscle on their body. And so certain forms of exercise promote, at the very least, not keeping muscle, at the very, very least. So let's start with the first thing, which is this. And this is, in my opinion, one of the most important. Are you in a place to cut calories? Yeah, it's all in the setup. That's 100%. Like, if your metabolic rate is only burning 1,700 calories a day, if you've adapted to eating 1,700 calories a day, where do you go from there? 1,200 calories? Okay, so now you're in a 500-calorie deficit. That'll result in some weight loss, which, by the way, once you get down that low, it's very hard to get essential nutrients or enough intake to give you what you need for exercise. But let's just say you're fine. Now what? Now you're in a place to cut calories. Now you're stuck at 1,200. You've plateaued. Where do you go now? 1,000? 900? Obviously, not a good place to be. So a good place to cut calories from is a place where your resting metabolic rate, the amount of calories you're burning on a regular basis, normally, is high enough to cut from. It's more in a comfortable place. Yeah, yeah. And you really do have to put the work in there to sometimes, you know, build it up. So you got to build your way up to a point where it's like, might even feel like a bit of a chore. But to then cut from there makes it so much This is maybe the number one problem in the bikini competitor space. For sure. And it became really obvious to me after I competed and got a little bit of attention on social media and at the shows. And I would start to get these competitors to ask me if I would coach them. And I started taking on clients. And I took on quite a few bikini clients. And many of them, though, I had to turn down or tell them that they had to work with me for a year leading up to the show. Because where they were metabolically was just not safe or ideal for them to compete. In other words, I would get these competitors, these female competitors that, you know, they needed to lose, say, five to 10% body fat to get on stage. But they were already eating only 1700 calories or 1800 calories. And this is this is out of prep. This is not in prep. And they'd be like, Hey, I want you to prep me for a show and say two or three months and I'd be like, I can't. I mean, I can't with goodwill and good faith because I know that the only way I could get you to keep losing is I'm going to sacrifice a ton of muscle and you're going to be I'm going to just destroy the metabolism. You're going to feel awful to get there and you won't look good. No, because we're so low calorie already. And so I would need you to be willing to either one work with me for a year or so leading up to a show. So I could reverse diet you or I couldn't I couldn't work with you. You'd have to go back and do it on your own and then come back to me when you had a high 100%. If I had a female client who wanted to lose five to eight pounds, and she was at maintenance at 2000 calories, maybe I would cut her for a little bit. That's it. Five to eight pounds. Somebody comes up is I want to lose 15 pounds of body fat, 20 pounds of body fat, and you're eating 2000 calories a day right now. I don't have much room. And by the way, the lower the calories get, the greater the odds that you'll lose muscle. Okay, the stronger the signal is to get rid of this, you know, this expensive metabolic tissue. If I have a man that comes to me, and he's in, you know, 2400 calories, 2300 calories, and he has maybe five to eight pounds of lose, okay, I might cut you more than that. I'm sorry, we don't have a lot of runway. So you got to be in a good place to cut from before you even decide to cut. Otherwise, you're gonna lose tons of muscle also consider the room for air when you're dealing with that small of a number because the calorie deficit is a greater percentage now the total calories. In other words, if I had somebody who had a you know, resting metabolic rate saves ridiculous just for hypothetical reasons, 4000 calories, and they accidentally and I have them on a 500 calorie deficit to lose body fat, and they overate by 150 250 calories in a day, they're still in a deficit and still fine, we're still heading the right pace. But take somebody who's at 2000 calories, and we're at a 250 calorie deficit, and they overeat by 250 calories, they're back up to maintenance, maybe surplus, because of how small of a percentage they are. So the that matters to the lower you go, the more difficult it becomes, the harder it gets, because there is you have to be absolutely perfect, where when we give yourself this higher metabolic rate, we have a lot more room for air and a buffer of, you know, you know, as long as we're about this down, we'll be fine, we'll keep leaning out versus we have to be precise when you're that low. Yeah, and then use your example, again, an extreme example of 4000 calorie, you know, you're burning 4000 calories, and you want to go on a cut, I could cut you 1000 calories, no problem. You still have 3000 calories, right? I don't have much room to go when it's really low. So let's say this is you, let's say you're in a good place to cut from. Here's the second thing. Let the food make the deficit, not the calories burned. Yes, with exercise. Stop worrying about how many calories you can burn with your workouts. Look at your workouts like this. What are the adaptations that the workout induces? And are those beneficial for my goal? So if your goal is to get lean and keep every pound of money. muscle, then the adaptation I'm looking for is strength, right? So I'm strength training. What I'm not doing is looking at my workouts and going, what burns the most calories? There's two reasons why this is a problem. Number one, the body's remarkable at adapting to calories burned while you exercise. I'll give you a great example. You get really good at cycling. Your body actually learns how to burn less calories while cycling. And it does this because it gets better at it. I mean, the studies show as quickly as two to three weeks. Two to three weeks, the body starts to adapt and become more efficient at that. And so the thing, and using just- Because you get better at it. Hypothetical numbers for the person that they understand what that means. It's like, the first time you cycled for an hour, your body burnt 500 calories. The next time it was 450. So it's just getting lower and lower. And what it is, it's becoming more efficient at whatever adaptation you're doing. And this is a good thing, by the way. If our bodies didn't do this, we wouldn't have survived. We would disappear. Yeah, we wouldn't have survived. We'd all disappear. For most of human history, before food became so plentiful. So when you're looking at your deficit, not that activity doesn't matter. It does matter. But you're not trying to create the deficit or lean on the activity for the deficit. It's the diet that creates the deficit. And two, people with that kind of mentality will try to avoid true strength training because it doesn't burn. That's right. Which, in fact, the true strength training is what's preserving the muscles. So you have to consider that as well. A hundred percent. Because if I did, you know, 45 minutes of crazy intense circuit training, I'm going to burn twice as many calories than if I did 45 minutes of traditional strength training. Yet the traditional strength training is what's going to keep the muscle. The circuit training is not what's going to keep the muscle. And also, it's not that many calories, you guys. The amount of calories you burn during exercise, you could easily eat those calories. Well, I've always thought this was so interesting when I would see my competitors do this. And I'm like, if you did a really good job in the off season, building your metabolism up to where you have lots of runway with the calories, I always found it far easier for me to take one less bite in every meal I ate for the day than it would be to get on a treadmill for an hour of high-intensity cardio. Way more manageable. It's way easier to go like, oh, there's one less bite I take of that meal. I mean, six meals a day, one less bite on every single one of those meals ends up equating to more calories than the entire hour they would get up and do cardio. It's a way easier discipline for me to just go, OK, I'm going to stop right there and eat less calories than it is I'm going to go spend an hour. All this time. Where I'm also potentially, especially depending on the intensity and where my calories are, risking that my body's going to want to pare down muscle because it's like, oh, you're going to push us like this and not feed us? Which takes us to the next thing. So, OK, you're listening to this right now. Maybe you've listened to the podcast for a while or you've read the data and you're like, OK, lifting weights, that's the best way to exercise to keep muscle while I'm in a deficit. OK, here's a mistake everybody makes. They're in a normal phase of strength training. They're in surplus. Everything looks good. They're ready to go in a cut. They cut their calories and they simultaneously dramatically increase the volume of their training because they're thinking to themselves and I get the rationale, burn more calories. I got to do more work. I'm trying to get lean. This is the opposite of what you should do. One of the factors, one of the things that factors into your ability to recover and adapt to exercise is your nutrient intake. So when you've cut your nutrient intake, what you've done is you've reduced your ability to recover and adapt to exercise. There's an old saying in bodybuilding. In bodybuilding and in powerlifting, and it's not 100% true, but there's some truth to it. And this is what they would say. The old timers would say this, right? There's no such thing as overtraining, only under eating. And why did they say this? There's some truth to it. There's definitely some truth to it. When you're taking in more nutrients, you recover better. You adapt better. You can handle more exercise volume. When you cut your calories, it's the opposite. What you're doing when you increase the volume of training while cutting calories, you're setting yourself up for terrible failure, and your body's inability to recover from it. Which is counterintuitive, and it doesn't come natural, because the average person that has been strength training and getting used to kind of lifting for a while and eating better and building momentum, they tend to ramp up as time goes on. That's right. And again, I would see this even at the competitive level, is they're heading into showtime six weeks out. They're doing more training than ever. Yeah. They increased cardiovascular activity. They're doing supersets in their training. They're adding. It's like, man. It's like. No wonder you're not hanging on to muscle during this process. You are just overstressing the body while you're underfeeding it. Of course, it's going to pare down muscle in that situation. The most. Of course, there's factors that can change this, okay? But generally speaking, for me, the best success I've ever seen for myself and for people I've worked with in a deficit is low-volume strength training, low-rep strength training. And it's. Why? Because it's less volume. Yeah. So we're doing sets of. You're going to recover from that. We're doing sets of five reps, not three sets of 15 reps. We're doing less sets. We're doing less exercises. This is the best strategy I've ever seen for muscle preservation. Now, on the opposite end of the scale, when I've seen. And I did this in the past, because this is what I thought I was supposed to do. Ramp up volume, ramp up intensity with a deficit. And all that happened with my clients is they burnt out and lost more muscle. Same thing with myself. Listen, the goal is when we are in a cut, the goal is no longer to build muscle. The goal is to preserve muscle. Yeah. And we know what the studies say. It's like. I know there's several and it ranges from like 1/5th to 1/7th to 1/9th in some of them. It's like 1/7th the volume is needed in order. To keep. to keep the muscle. Yeah. And that's the goal. The goal is just to keep it. And most people don't even come close to cut, which means you can easily cut your volume in half and still be able to maintain that muscle, more than that. But most people don't come anywhere near cutting it in half when they do this. That's right. All right. So what about activity? Daily activity is good for you. It's healthy, improves longevity. But the game that we're playing with activity in a calorie deficit is stress management. So strength training is always stressful. It's supposed to be. We're trying to keep muscle or build muscle, especially when we're in a surplus. So I want to keep the intensity for those important workouts. But what about my daily activity? It's good to be more active. And here's what you do. Increase low stress activity. Increase stress and walking. Walking, unless you're doing extreme, crazy things with walking, you're taking 20,000 steps. By the way, we've seen people on the show call in with 20,000, 25,000 steps a day. Unless you're super adapted to that, like you're a mail carrier or something like that. I do it every day. Low stress activity, increasing that, tends to not increase the stress. In fact, in many cases it helps reduce the stress. Yeah, it's restorative. There's a way to move that's restorative. And really, you want the blood to flow. You want that. To carry all the nutrients, to be able to help you in the healing process and the recovery process in general. So it's a good practice to have, but it's really about managing the intensity of it. I mean, I think this is the secret sauce to getting shredded. I really do, is the low level walking, neat type of movement increased over time as you're in a cut. And let the food do most of it with the increase of activity. Because to your point, Justin, more blood and more oxygen, more nutrients, means faster- It facilitates recovery. That's right. Facilitates recovery. So we're going to recover faster and better. And it's not a loud enough signal. Because then somebody would be like, "Well, isn't that what cardio is doing too?" It's like, well, cardio is moving the blood and oxygen and nutrients and stuff like that. But then it's also so intense that it sends a louder signal to the body. The body needs to adapt to this modality of training. Where simply just walking and moving is not doing that. It's purely recuperative. And so if I can find a way to just increase my activity through walking and steps and movement, I'm going to create a larger calorie deficit and just shred down that body fat. Yeah. Now, finally, obviously, obviously, the big challenge with eating in a deficit is things like cravings and appetite. And here's the deal. This is a fact. I'm not going to be one of those people that says, "Being in a deficit, never feel hungrier." The odds are if you're losing body fat, you're doing it consistently, your body's going to send a hunger signal. Why? Well, because your body doesn't want to lose body fat. It loves that stored energy. It loves the security of having extra body fat. So what you want to do with your diet is you want to eat in ways that produce more satiety. Can you do that? Are there things you can eat or things you can avoid that dramatically increase satiety? And the answer is yes. Number one, and the first thing, is what not to eat, which are foods that tend to make us overeat. Heavily processed foods are phenomenal at doing this, and they're designed to do this. Now, when food manufacturers and food scientists, and by the way, the science that goes into this is some of the most well-studied science in the world. If you look into it, it's remarkable the science that goes into this kind of stuff. What they're not doing is saying necessarily, "We want people to overeat." What they're trying to do is make something hyperpalatable. In other words, make it so enjoyable, so tasty that the people come back to buy more. Well, here's this. The side effect of that is you go well beyond what you would do with normal foods in terms of satiety. Some of the best studies ever done on food ever were done on processed foods versus whole natural foods. The reason why they're so well done is because when you look at food studies, so many of these studies are what are known as observational studies. We take a group of people, we have them fill out a survey. They can give us some insight, but it's like how many tomatoes did you eat last week type of stuff. We got to rely on people's memory and all that stuff. stuff. Well, here's what they do with processed food studies. They take groups of people and they put them in rooms. and they matched the macros. So proteins, fats, and carbs are similar in each room. And then they left the people to eat and they observed them. And then even better, they took the same group of people and they switched them into the different rooms. Because you never know, you might have a group over here that eats more than this other group, but they switched them. Here's what they found. On average, people eat about five to 600 more calories a day with the processed foods. In other words, the same level of satiety is reached with 600 less calories when it's whole natural foods. That's a huge number. Huge. That's a deficit. Most people in a deficit are trying to cut 600 calories. Well, you're done. So if you're eating heavily processed foods, if you want to play this game on super incredible hard mode, go ahead and do it with heavily processed foods. You want to make it easier on yourself, avoid them like the plague, stick to whole natural foods. And then the second thing, which is a banger because it gives you two benefits, is eat high protein. So protein produces more satiety than carbohydrates and fats, significantly more. Eat high protein. And here's this other side of it that's so awesome. It also is muscle preserving. In fact, there are studies without strength training, which I love this, where they put people in a deficit. They have a high protein group and a normal protein group. They don't even have them lift weights. The high protein group still keeps more muscle. So whole natural foods and high protein, that's the part of the diet that makes it far easier to stick to. If you do these things, you'll be blown away by how much body fat you lose and how much muscle. It's amazing how well this works. The hardest part is the psychological part. When the cravings kick up and your desires and habits of, oh, I used to eat this snack or this sounds really good right now, if you can just resist that and go to the food that you hopefully prepped in the refrigerator or the beef jerky, the high protein or the Greek yogurt, high protein Greek yogurt and make that choice, it's amazing how, satisfying. Because when you're hungry and you're low calorie, food tastes good. But your cravings and the psychological part of like, oh, God, popcorn sounds really good or all that cereal or that candy. Yeah, all these foods sound so good. And if you could just resist the urge and go like, I'm going to go have the Greek yogurt even though that doesn't sound the best. Once you actually eat it, it's actually really satisfying. It's wild. My favorite example of this, and we had Chris Kresser on the show years ago. He gave this example. I thought it was so awesome. He said, if I put four or five, uh, baked plain boiled potatoes in front of you, some plain, just boiled white potatoes, and I told you to eat them all, you probably would fail. It'd be very difficult. You'd choke down one of them and then you'd be like, I don't want to eat anymore. But if I placed a family size bag of potato chips in front of you, how much do you think you can eat? Now I know myself and I can get pretty far. I might even be able to finish the bag. Well, guess what? Same amount of potatoes. One of them hyper palatable. One of them whole natural. One of them, my satiety kicks in real fast. The other one, it takes till the end of the bag. Before I start to get, that's the satiety signal. It's wild how, so it's funny you brought up the baked potato thing that Chris Kresser talked about. Uh, yesterday's, uh, prepped meal and today's prepped meal I have today is, is Katrina's meatloaf and just a straight baked potato. Yeah. And I'll even allow myself to salt it, which adds a little palatability and easier. And yesterday, uh, I didn't, I got through like three quarters of the baked potato. So I won't, I mean, I eat it until I'm satisfied and I'm good. And I really am eating it just to compliment the, you want to know what's funny. They just came out with this, all of us who've trained people for a long time were like, obviously people who eat the same foods every single day. Uh, so they took a group of people and they said, here, eat the same kind of foods every single day. They all lost weight. Now, the reason why they lost weight is one of the, the factors that plays into palatability is novelty. Yeah. And so if you eat the same foods every day, yeah, they, they just, they just don't eat as much because it's boring. That's the point. So when I read this study, I'm like, well, of course, you know, that happens. Everybody's blown away though. Eat the same foods. It's the new diet. Just eat chicken breast, broccoli, any like sweet, the salt or like, you know, fat and you kind of mix around those combos. It's like, it's a lot easier to all of a sudden restoke it. That's why when you're full, you can always eat dessert. Yeah. Hey, talk about blown away. I, um, so I, whenever my friends, uh, reach out to me with like, uh, you know, blood work stuff, uh, cholesterol, if they're, uh, anything, anything medical related, I always defer to Sal. So I called Sal up cause I had, this was like, I don't know, it was a few months ago, probably three, three, three months ago or so, somewhere on there. Your buddy's lipids were. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, and, uh, and it like puzzles me when it's like a buddy of mine that I would consider pretty healthy. Like he's in, he, he looks in relatively good shape. He's an active guy. There's a lot of like mountain biking stuff. And, um, no, I don't follow him around and see exactly what he eats, but he's in, he doesn't carry a bunch of body fat. Uh, and he's, and he's active. And, he was asking me cause he showed me like his, his cholesterol was really high. I have the numbers here. Yeah. And I sent it to you. So you got them. Yeah. And I, I was like, uh, what are the things that you, you would have them do? And you had to make a few modifications nutritionally and then include dose. And his improvement is, was crazy. So dose is a company, uh, that makes these pro one of them lowers, uh, cholesterol. It's proven in studies. It's all natural. It's got natural compounds. It's actually liquid by the way. It's like, tastes like juice. So you take like a shot of it. Every single day. And they have studies to show that it works. And I like studies cause so many supplements out there that say this, that, and the other. And if I don't see the studies, I'm always very skeptical cause 90% of supplements don't do anything. So, uh, he tried dose and here's the numbers. His total cholesterol went from two 93 to two Oh one. His LDL went from 200 to one 24. Remarkable change. It's like he took a stat. Yeah. Which is great. Yeah. It's great. And that's what he was trying to side effects of a stat. So by the way, that's why he reached out was he's like, they wanted to put them on a stat and I'm like, Whoa, before you do that, hold on. Let me, let me talk to Sal and see what he would, he would advise you to do. And I said, I'll get back to you. And so you, I talked to you and then sent it. Oh, I mean, that was you, bro. Um, yeah, no, yeah, no, he, that's exactly what he did. He really just cleaned up. Good job to you. Yeah. Good job for telling me, dude. Thanks. Thanks, bro. Thanks. You know that he, he, I know he, uh, he cut out, um, the, he knows he was like a snacker and processed foods and stuff like that. And so he stuck to the, the whole foods, uh, tried to, he didn't cut out red meat, but he, he, he limited it. He wasn't just going, you know, buck wild on it and then added the, the dose in every day. And I bet his doctor's tripping. Oh, you know what? I meant to ask him what his, what his doctor should do. I know his, his wife originally was like, Hey, why don't you just do all these things first before you take a, the, the supplement or that? And I'm like, Oh, I'm so glad you still did it anyways. Cause it's an all natural supplement. Yeah. Yeah. Something you could take forever. Everything in itself. It's not a, it's not a pill or it's not like this. Uh, no, it's not a drug. It's not a drug. This is like, it's all it is, is all these all natural fruits and things that are combined in a little liquid. You know, what's crazy with cholesterol is I'm going to get flame for this, but when you look at the data on statins in there and how they actually, now they, they for sure reliably change your blood lipids. That's a fact. You take a statin, your numbers will change. That's a fact. But when you look at the data on, what does that actually mean in the sense of, does it actually extend life? Does it actually reduce, uh, you know, heart attacks and heart disease and all that stuff. It gets a little bit murky because you also have side effects in there. So there's all this controversy around statins. When should you take them? Should you take them? It seems like the data points to, if you've already had a heart attack, it's more beneficial than if you've never had a heart attack. And so, and you can look through the data, everybody can look it up and, and see for yourself. But here's the deal. When people change their blood lipids, through exercise, diet, natural ways, uh, like something like the compounds that are in dose, you see, you definitely see an improvement in longevity. Definitely. So what, what we tend to do, uh, with medicine is we look at a number that connects to an outcome and we try to control the number. Uh, and then we hope to see, or we think we're going to see, uh, an outcome when, when sometimes that's not the case. Sometimes the number itself is saying something else and it's what's causing that or, or other things. Um, and that's why when you change, uh, those number, even if look, by the way, even if you, your blood lipids didn't change much, but you exercise and change your diet, you see great outcomes. So pretty cool. Speaking of which, dude, I got a process food study for you guys. That's interesting. And you know, years ago I trained this woman that she conducted studies. I forgot what university she worked for, but she helped run studies and she really helped me a lot understand how to read studies, um, and how to look, look at maybe possible causes or whatever. So I'm going to read to you guys a study and then I'm gonna show you guys kind of, you know, what I came out with. So here's a study. So this is the, a, the radiological society of North America. So what they, this is the title of the studies and science news on science, daily.com ultra processed foods linked to hidden, hidden muscle fat that may threaten your knees. Okay. So here's, what's wild about the study eating more ultra ultra processed foods, which we just talked about earlier was linked to greater fat buildup in inside thigh muscles. According to MRI scans of 615 adults at risk for knee osteoarthritis. Here's where it gets crazy. Surprisingly, the association remained even after researchers accounted for caloric intake, physical activity and other factors. In other words, what they're, what they think they found is that ultra processed foods independent of the increased caloric intake would cause more intramuscular fat. So I'm thinking about this. And I'm like, Hmm, are there obesity genic compounds and processed foods that can cause these things? There's some data that suggests maybe, but there's actually way more data that shows that it's really about the calories. That's, That's the big thing. So how is this possible that it's independent that they tried to control for calories? And I'll tell you why. What they did is they took 615 people and they compared them against each other. What they didn't do is take these people and compare them to themselves. So what I mean by that is everybody has a different resting metabolic rate. If you're eating a lot of ultra processed foods, you're eating way more than you should. So if I control your calories against another guy's and I'm like, oh, they're eating the same calories, but you have more intramuscular fat. What I don't know is that your body burns less calories. So you're just eating more than you would if it was whole natural foods. So what it's not saying, I know the title says it's independent of calories. The only way to know that is if you took the same person, put them on the same caloric intake, ultra processed foods versus not, and then look and see what the answer is. I'd also be really curious to like how accurately are they measuring calories because we know what FDA allows with processed foods. So there's a 20 plus percent room for error. A lot of people don't know that. And if you're, if this study is conducted and we're like, oh, well, we took these, this is a 3000 calories in processed foods. According to what the label on the back of it could be 36 or did you actually independently take each and every one of those foods and measure what it is? Or did you just take the label for another one? And I would imagine in a study that are expensive to do anyways, that you just said, oh, this is good enough. We'll just follow that when we know that there's room for 20 to 25 percent error, which that alone could make a difference. Well, here's what I know. If I, if somebody's eating a lot of ultra processed foods. They're eating away more than they would if they didn't for sure. That makes sense. But so did anybody speculate on obesogenic type compounds? So that not in this study, but there are studies that suggest, and I think they're, they're decent. That there are certain compounds that promote fat storage, things like xenoestrogens. So I'm not saying that that's not playing a role, but I don't think that's the case here. I think what the case here is, is that Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Smith and, you know, uh, you know, Mrs. Whatever we're looking at their caloric intake, we're controlling it. But what we are not considering is that Mrs. Smith is eating 80% of her calories from ultra process is eating way more than she would for herself. Yeah. And that's going to cause more fat storage as a result. So, but yeah, I really, I really appreciate, uh, appreciate that client. Cause now I can look at studies and I'm not going to read between the lines. I'm not the best at it, but it helps a lot because so many studies with the, with the headlines. Oh, I know. You just read, I always wonder. Yeah. Like, you know what, they're actually, you know, hoping the outcome is going to be in like what the purpose of the study is to begin with. You know, my favorite example. I mean, there's a, I think a large percentage of all studies have like a desired outcome. Yeah. There's a bias going in. I mean, they're being funded normally by the, in which I know that, um, well, here's what happens with our friends like lane and stuff. We've talked about like, it's you, you have to have, you have to have no one's going to fund it for it. Right. Well, so here's what happens with that. It's less that you have this nefarious company. That is, that is tweaking the study to try to make it, uh, look the way it wants or they're lying. That may play a role. It's less of that. It's more of this. If you're, if you're a pharma company or you're a food company and a study comes out with a result that you don't like, you're not publishing it. Right. Yeah. So you're not like, I'm not sending this out. Just disregard that. Yeah. We're not going to put this out. I'm going to keep it. It benefits your, yeah. Yeah. Your product. One of my favorite examples of the, I have a few examples, but one of my favorites is the old studies that showed that when, so when I was a kid, uh, this, they were still saying this, like, Oh, don't drink too much coffee. Oh, that causes cancer. They actually used to say that too much coffee. I know that's associated with cancer. Well, it was because in the eighties, seventies, sixties, seventies, and eighties, people who drunk the most coffee also smoked the most cigarettes. And so they just weren't controlled. That was a definite thing. That was coffee and cigarettes. Coffee's anti-cancer. I thought I saw somebody actually recently, um, how was it? Is there a tell or one of the, I can't remember who it was that was talking. About some recent studies on caffeine. In fact, they're sitting in Justin would love this saying that like the health benefits all the way up to like six, 800 milligrams a day, like that healthy for you. That's a, that's a high dose. Just keep watching all these studies, like backing caffeine and cheese, dude. I'm like, yeah. Here's the thing with caffeine. It's so individual. So when you look at a group of people that, that drink 600 milligrams of caffeine regularly, you're looking at a group of people that tolerate caffeine. There's such a difference. Yeah. There's such a difference with how. I'm sure there's going to be something about adrenals later, but whatever. Well, I just know that I know it's for fact, like in this room alone, you have a high, the probably the highest tolerance for caffeine in the room. Yeah. Adam would be second and I'm third Doug's last. Yeah. So if I had 600 milligrams of caffeine in a day, I would feel horrible. I would feel 400 as my, as my max Doug sticks at like 50 to a hundred at the most. Right. Which is interesting on average. On average. Yeah. I mean, I even, it took me till college to even start drinking any kind of caffeine. Like I, the first time I even had, it was like black coffee I drank at, when I was working at a restaurant and I was working a double and I was just so incredibly exhausted, you know, and I tried it and then it was like, whoa, all of a sudden it was this energy rush because before that it's like the sugar drinks you thought like jolt had a lot of caffeine had like barely any in it in comparison to the drinks. I think jolt had 81 milligrams of caffeine. Yeah. I think it's all sugar. I mean, I, my, my first introduction was my junior year in high school when I started. Uh, the dairy in the morning before work. Yeah. And so I'd swing by, uh, seven 11 and I was drinking those. I mean, it was like, it's like chocolate mocha coffees, you know, you know, there's like a lot of, I wish my introduction to caffeine was what you guys have to do. And so like I, you know, so that it started and it was literally like out of necessity. It was like four o'clock in the morning before school. Uh, never been used to, I've never been a morning person as it is. And then getting up to work, um, I knew something. And this was really before. I want to energy drinks weren't as popular as they are today. Like there wasn't, I mean, now there's like a plethora of them. The only, I'm trying to remember when red bull was first coming on the market. Do you remember when it read much later, dude? Yeah, this is, this is like the nineties, right? So I'm, so there were no energy drinks. There was Joe Cola and then there were bodybuilders do is like one. I think that the, the increased the caffeine a little bit, but I mean, red bull might've been coming on the scene. Although I didn't like red bull. I never liked the taste of red bull, never been a fan. Uh, but they, they were probably the first. Oh, look at it. When? No, no, no, no. I, uh, nine, eight, 1987 in Austria, but in the U S it was like the, probably the tooth, like, like late nineties, early two thousand. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, 97, 97. Yeah. And I don't remember seeing that. That's literally seven. Yeah. So this is exactly, so 1997 is the year I'm referring to right now. So I'm like, I don't even know about red bull at this point. So coffee was 81 milligrams of caffeine. So literally, oh yeah. And low. So like your, your way of getting energy back then was only coffee. Yeah. And so kids didn't drink coffee. Yeah. He was, oh yeah, no. It wasn't. I remember like doing it. It wasn't like a, uh. It tastes gross. I thought I would just stain my teeth. I had to drink the sugar bomb version of it to get it down. And it was like, I needed this to get my association was caught with coffee was either espresso because obviously my family's Italian, but my main association were my teachers whose breath would be terrible. Yes. Cause they would have coffee. Yeah. Well that, and they guarantee they smoke too. Yes. Yeah. The combo of both was horrible. It was horrible. My dude, you guys, I wish my grandma, I wish my introduction to caffeine was coffee. My introduction. Yeah. But I went hard right out the gates. Cause remember I was into lifting weights at 14. I super nerded out on supplements right out the gates. So I learned real early ephedra and caffeine and yo him be in significant. And I learned it right, right out the gates and I didn't know what I was doing, making your own cocktail. I did dude. And I mixed them together because I first, I did a caffeine and ephedra and of course I went to the gym and it was like Superman taking meth. You know what I mean? I'm working out. This is the greatest thing ever. Homemade meth. And then, uh, I did this combination of them and I'll never forget, dude, I went to 24 fitness, uh, on Hillsdale. So I was, I was a kid. I was like 15. My dad dropped me off and I was like two and a half hours. I was getting after it. It was crazy. Then I, he brings me home. I come home, eat dinner, barely had an appetite, laid in bed. And I was like, just, my mom's going to find me dead because my heart was beating. And I was just like, please don't let me die. I really don't want my mom to fight me this way. Yeah. And then it had the ultimate orange. I don't remember. I think my first, uh, pre-workout was phosphagen. I think there, uh, the EAS, I don't think they had, there was no caffeine in that. I think their EAS had a, no phosphagen was creatine. And then there was phosphagain. What was there? What was EAS pre? Did they have a pre-workout? That's a good question. Maybe they didn't then. So then maybe it was the BPN, the red one. Yeah. Um, cause those are the two, like I have the furthest memory back is like the red BPN, or the, or the phosphor or phosphagen EAS stuff. So EAS didn't have a pre-workout. I don't think they did. Did they? What was it called at the time? Myoplex? No, that's now. Yeah. I don't, I don't think they really had one back in the day. It says caffeine in there. Yeah. But that's later. That's back in 2016. Yeah. No, that's later. Do you know what EAS had? Talk about brilliant marketing. So Bill Phillips, uh, came out with a supplement guide. You guys remember that? Yeah. It was actually pretty informational, but it was really just a big commercial for his products. It was brilliant. Oh, they sold so much. Bro. He had, he had a three capsule stack, three supplement stack. He had creatine, vanadol sulfate. Okay. I don't know if you guys know what that is. No, what is it? And glutamine. Okay. And you take them all three and this is how brilliant he was. He said in the, in the, in his magazine, he had Muscle Media 2000, he said, "Creatine, that's like D-ball." He said. Yeah. He gained big muscles real fast. Wow. Vanadol sulfate and glutamine, those are more like deca, like more of the quality. It's, this is literally what he said. We're selling creatine all wrong, bro. Oh, let's see. So I bought all three of them and I took them. And it worked because it was creatine. The other stuff didn't. It's so funny that, because I so can connect to that because I remember how old I was and like, you wanted the supplements that looked the most great, great market. Like if it had like the more illegal, it was made in some crazy, like mad science lab. This was banned in 50 something states. It's like, what? I'm taking that, you know, or had like a syringe on the back, dragging on it. Bro, I bought a supplement from the back of the muscle magazine. It was called Muscle Mix and the picture of it was a vial. So it was a vial. So I ordered it and what it was, it was a dropper and it was a Smilax was what was in it. This is like a, it's supposed to raise, it did nothing. Right. But when I bought it, I was like, Oh, this is going to be straight from the lab. I can't believe it. It's in the back of the magazine. They don't know I'm 15. I'm going to buy this again. You should still sell stuff in beakers. Hey, did you guys, you guys didn't see this data, dude, trip off this. We've been talking about GLP ones and what they're doing or whatever. You guys want to hear the, this is the first time we've seen this in decades. Adult obesity stopped and reversed. It is now. Right now. Right now. It is on the down. It is now. So it peaked at 45%. Right now it's at 43. So it's been on this uphill climb for decades. Decades. It's just been climb, climb, climb, climb. Nothing's really touched it. We saw it start to stop right around 2022 or so. And everybody's like, what's going on? Maybe we reached peak obesity or whatever. And now it's going down. And I, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. It's a GLP one. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, what was the number? Was it with Dr. Tina? We talked about the number of people now that are on one. So look up this. I saw this 10% of Americans. How many? Yeah. But you, what's even crazier is how many people per week are onboarding to it. It's like, it's like in the. I want to say tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Oh, it's crazy. Weekly are, are, are, are coming on board of starting it every week. I think conservatively, and maybe I'll be wrong, but I think half of America is going to be on GLP. Half of them, especially when you consider, I'm looking at these studies that they're doing right now, guys, they're not out yet. Uh, in other words, they haven't published what's going on, but they're, they're, they're showing some of the stuff GLPs obviously help with weight loss. We know that they're showing effects on weight loss. What does that say? Tens of tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand people started GLP one medication each week in the U S alone. Yeah. That's insane. So the study, so this is what, so trip off this works great for, uh, weight loss. We know this now there's caveats there. You got to lift weights, eat enough protein. It doesn't work for everybody. Some people get bad side effects. Okay. But as, as far as medical interventions are concerned, there's nothing we've ever had that comes close. Nothing, not even close. So here's what's crazy. We've heard this from, uh, practitioners who use GLPs on how people are less likely to drink, to smoke, to gamble, uh, how autoimmune conditions seem to be getting better. What's going on? Uh, the speculation was it's affecting the hedonistic pathways of the brain. That's with all the other addictions, the autoimmune issues. Well, it must be the reduced calories. Cause we know this when people start to eat less, oftentimes autoimmune issues get better. I just saw the study. Uh, that's coming out that showed that, uh, psoriasis, uh, got better, uh, before the weight loss even started happening. Independent of weight loss. Wow. Yeah. And they're studying GLPs for all kinds of stuff. So we may, I mean, we might be tapping into something that is going to reach more than just, so are you ready for me to switch teams again? So I came out originally and, you know, argued with you that I believed it would be a net positive. You were skeptical early on. Then I jumped ship, came over to your side and said, I think you're right. And now I'm, now I'm, now I'm jumping back on the other side and I'll tell you why. I think a lot of it has to do with my personal experience, proper usage. So, and, and maybe that's what was what, and I don't think you were per se wrong, but I think that we had to, we had to swing so hard the other direction where it became alarming and then, and then course correct. And more people are becoming privy to how much muscle you can lose, how important the protein intake is. Doctors. Now we're probably prescribing lower doses and then what they were early on, because if we've seen enough of this alarming stuff come back and maybe that's enough to, because obviously there's still going to be people that abuse it. Don't do it right. Neglect. You know, and I see that. I definitely still see that. But I also do see some people, I've had people in my circle who, um, that I kind of like shook and woke up like, Hey, you were like, you're losing a ton of muscle. You're taking too much of this, have gone back, modify their medication. And then now. It's much better. Much better. Like got muscle, look healthy, eating an adequate amount of calories. And so maybe this does end up being a net positive, uh, once more education around how to properly dose it and pairing it with making sure that you strength training protein. Now I kind of feel like I'm jumping back on the other side again, where I think this could be a, especially when you start seeing this stuff, like, like why I got back on it with this, like psoriasis and autoimmune stuff. I don't know. I think it's a good thing. i definitely there's an obvious psychological oh yeah because there's a distortion of even the way i've visualized oh like you and i bro you and i very similar right skinny tried to always gain muscle always trying to overfeed ourselves a lot of stuff uh what you and i would register as uh eating enough yeah has been skewed by decades of just sure like crazy yeah so i don't i already know there's for sure a psychological part of it i'm more curious on like mechanistically like is there something going on well it does lower your appetite for sure and it does slow down motility which probably changes the kind of foods you want to eat because oh yeah slower motility will make things sit in your oh yeah like i i this is something that it's it's it's been really good for me because i've had to like where i would keep eating because i know i need to to be big i go i have that natural signal i'm full and i've pushed that a few times where i'm like oh no i have more on my plate i'm like versus i'm done just like i told you i uh my potato right yeah part of my meal yeah like what's wrong with you yeah especially it's a healthy it's a healthy food and it's carbs i need that it's extra calories you shrink do you have the extra digestion so i've just i've just i've learned now i've learned my lesson if i don't like it'll it'll really mess up um my digestion because how much my motility has slowed down and so i've learned now to once i i eat my i eat my meatloaf i'm eating my baked potato and oh i get about halfway to three quarters way through and like oh i'm good and i'm like okay i need i can put this away you're not ignoring that where i've ignored it for so long by the way for people listening so if your issue is slow motility glps can make that really bad so if you're somebody's stuff like has issues with constipation you got to be very careful when you're on one now i know you eat less so that helps but you got to pay attention to what you're eating don't eat things that constipate you when you're on glp1 if that's your issue and make sure you you you increase your fiber otherwise because i've i've talked to enough of our listeners oh it makes total sense why it does it i've had people get sitting there they got sebo they got sebo from it because they wanted a glp it slowed down they were already slow motility yeah it slowed it down so much they developed gut issues as a result so now for someone like me where it's fast motility it's actually a welcome uh thing no for other people it's been it's been a it's been a nice thing it's been something that like my wife's teased me about forever it's just like she she always like make fun of me because i'll eat dinner and then like 10 minutes later i'm already in the bathroom already yeah i can't get in and out yeah it's ready to go you know what i'm saying and so so it's like it's a it's a nice thing that i i feel a little normal now that it's not like that you know what i'm saying they have a normal schedule where it's like i've always been really really fast like that you know dude i gotta share with you guys so i i have not done maps anabolic uh or phase one maps anabolic in a long time yeah that's your bread and butter it's been a long time uh since i've done that now one of the reasons why i'm doing it is uh i'm my strength training which is the lowest it's been in a long time yeah um and so typically it's up leading up into this it's three or four days a week we're all strength trained i've been working to three now i've made like a concentrated effort like i'm only gonna lift three days a week and it has more to do with my attachment to working out and all that stuff and on one of the other days i'm gonna do something else that's uh that's more beneficial uh so i'm kind of using that for for that but so i'm only three days a week and i've i've done you know bodybuilding style training for a while haven't done anything you know i've done a lot of training i've done a lot of training i've done a lot of heavy low rep you know low volume like phase one anabolic in a very long time i've avoided deadlifts for a little while barbell squats for a little while just because i just want to work on other things and i this is now week two maybe two and a half of maps anabolic and i know why people like it so much it's addicting to see the strength gains it's crazy yeah like this really fun bro i mean that's like 15 20 pounds in fact you know what i'm doing and this was inspired by you adam is because i remember when you were regaining all that muscle how you kept hurting yourself and it was like it was kind of perplexing at first until we figured out like well yeah you added 50 pounds to your lift in like a week like of course that's a yeah so what i'm doing is i'm not allowing myself to go high add more than like five like if i can add 15 i'm only adding five because i'm like you know what it takes a lot of discipline to do that bro you kidding me i'm like pulling off the floor i'm like dude i could add another 50 pounds if i'm not yeah because i don't want to hurt myself yeah but i see why people love i mean because when you listen to all all of our listeners all of our maps program uh customers maps anabolic especially phase one is the one that people tend to talk about the most it's addicting yeah it's just the strength gains i can't help but laugh because it like we talk about the psychology of eating the psychology of lifting around what you're saying right now uh especially with dead lifting and squatting and i'm do i do the same thing right now because i learned that lesson in fact i was just squatting the other day and i felt really good and strong and it reminded me i literally like my old power lifting workout partner from years ago one of my early 20s was in my head of like uh 10 pounds doesn't count on squats we only move up in quarters or 45 plates like i swear to god i trade i trade for decades without tens and fives on sports yeah never use tens and fives jump like if i can't go up a quarter i ain't going up bro and so like i'm adding two and a half like i felt i felt really strong dude i do and i'm like i'm my natural instinct is to go over go grab the 25s i'm like i can put a 10 on you know i can put a reasonable yeah if you had a 10 on each side it's 20 pounds yeah that's a big jump it is but in my like i have trained myself for so many years that tens don't count bro i know i was like i'm gonna get there i just want to get there to the point where it's like okay here's the real weight you should see me right now dude i'm working out in the gym and it's like you know week two or week three and i go i get the two and a half and i put the little tiny two and a half on and i'm like this is stupid that's even better this is dumb i was proud i was proud of myself i was proud of i haven't done that forever yeah that actually it's a cool strategy when you get in that mindset and you're just adding the two and a halves and you're just like really like gently progressing well the hard part is i know what were my potential i know what i've left before yeah so i'm adding five pounds and i'm still 200 pounds no that's exactly what's hard for me too it's like i'm like this still isn't even that impressive of a weight for me like what i'm talking about right now is i was doing 275 yeah and i'm like 405 and i would normally go right up to 315 and i'm like well you know let me just add i'm just battling all the stress so i'm like i i've literally reduced it down to a few functional movements and then like i'd like maybe two three functional movements a day because dude like my my forearm flexor and like my grip and everything is dude i i must have done something but it's just it it's just so achy and it's pissing me off i love how justin says i must have done something you moved two tons of rock how many tons four times no four times yeah i wonder what happened my finger on it yes this is i must have slept wrong yeah yeah well you're good you're working out you're like oh god like oh it hurts the only person i believe when they're confused why they got hers adam because he literally will be like i did nothing no idea why am i hurt well i'll be like that i'll be that guy that i'm like sleeping and i'm also doing like wrist and shoulder cars and all that i'm like really trying to like you know work and spiral my way out of it it's not working speaking of like knowledge and stuff like that yesterday we had my buddy i was just gonna shout right out yeah i was just gonna shout him out because you brought up my injury and i'm like so ryan can't tell you how nice that was so ryan devita good friend of mine i go way back him and i worked at 24 fitness way back in the day when i started him and i started the personal training studio that i owned for so many years and we split up after a few years uh but he's one of the most i learned a lot from him when it comes to correctional exercises he's one of the most i didn't know that either yeah i just never knew like i didn't know him well enough uh obviously as you did and i just assumed that like he was a uh like his i just thought he was more the business acumen of the two of you in the business yeah i didn't realize he was that brilliant on the correctional when it comes to like exercise correctional exercise biomechanics correctional massage like the guy's like he's one of the best i mean he he he literally unpacked me in like two minutes and it was that i've been troubleshooting with you guys you didn't buy him dinner dude no dude well he put he put his finger adam was telling about some of his issues with like certain exercises and and ryan literally put his finger right where the origin of the pain was yeah adam's like whoa yeah that's right where it's at and then i'm like well you gotta explain to me why is it this because for me uh what was what was perplexing me was why is it when i when i actually put myself in a proper form and what we consider optimal position for bicep curls i have pain whereas if i put myself in this weird hunched over rounded position it's i don't i have minimal pain doing that which is counterintuitive to me yeah because you shorten yeah and and he broke it down and this whole time i thought it was my pec minor and he's like he's like oh it's pec major he goes you you tore your your pec major and it's just a matter of how much you tore it it's like you obviously i mean it does suck but it also feels like katrina was because i was so excited when i came home and she's like i don't understand why you're so excited like you knew you tore this and i'm like yeah but to be like more sure pointed yeah because like otherwise you're like what's going on what's happening yeah yeah like that's and i don't know it has to be like top top two or three pet peeves to be a personal trainer yeah and to not be able to solve to diagnose you with that oh god man like that just it's like i've helped so many people in so many ways and then to be you know for you to be perplexed on your own body who you you know everything that's going in it what you're doing and it's like can't get to the bottom of what's going on exactly and why i can't the last time that happened was when justin and i figured out that we needed to strengthen our hip flexors oh yeah that was which was like an epiphany yeah you almost never have to do with a client like really target their hip flexors and so and you and i were getting similar issues and i don't remember what it was we saw something yeah and i'm like i wonder if it's that hip pain yeah i started doing like specific hip flexor actually went away i was like oh god yeah of all things just like that i know crazy anyway i got i got to tell you guys so uh one of the interesting things about some supplements well some supplements you take and you feel right out the gates and others you feel but then you get used to how they feel and you forget that they're really doing a lot until you stop using it you ever have that experience where you that's the only way i decide if a supplement works really well for me i'm the one who's i'm you know me yeah whenever we talk about supplements i'm like even when i first start taking it and you're like how do you feel this i'm like well i feel pretty good i'm still skeptical it's not until i've been doing it for a while i take take it off then come and then the discrepancy of that is where i feel like i can really difference i can really hone in on like okay that's how impactful so seed so seed's a probiotic company and for people listening and so seed hasn't sent us a shipment in a little while and i guess that's a good thing i guess that's a good thing i guess that's a good thing i guess actually got i asked uh my our assistant to make sure that they send some she's like it's on its way i haven't taken seed for a couple weeks i noticed a big i noticed a huge difference in my digestion huge difference and i take it religiously every single night the multivitamin like every day every night empty stomach i take seed every single night we hadn't been getting a shipment i've kind of been not thinking about it and kind of forgot otherwise i would just buy it and uh and and i'm like today i'm like you know i keep i gotta remember to get some seed and then i'm like oh yeah we don't have any but i can tell yeah i could tell my digestion makes it makes a big difference such a big difference you too well yeah it does it makes a huge difference for me mainly like the whole day like as my digestion and everything else like yeah i feel like way i way more symptoms uh from you know my gut like throughout the day if i haven't done it so i'm more inspired now than ever to to get consistent with it um because of what i'm noticing with the psoriasis and glp1 and it's like i feel like adding that into this and trying to repopulate my gut with healthy bacteria well this is probably the combo best times i should try and do this and so um i was actually waiting for the shipment to come back in too for the exact same reason is because it's one of the things i haven't been good i've been really good since we met with cabral last time i've been dialed with my my vitamin d and my fish oil i've been really consistent with that i haven't been consistent with um my seed and that's i've been waiting for it to come in so we could do that especially with my gut and i've been waiting for it to come in so we could do that especially with it's going on because i'd love to report like okay let's see if i can make a difference with that let me introduce you to butcher box who are they what are they so this is a company that delivers healthy meats to your door and more so look think grass-fed meat pasture-raised chicken crate free chicken sorry uh heritage pork uh you want to you want wild caught fish you like protein you want to be healthy and also you want to save money so butcher box also saves you money even though you're getting some of the highest quality meats you can find anywhere you buy a box you organize what you want in the box they send it to your door now you've got meat for when you want to get those gains when you want to fuel your health when you want to feel great it tastes good it's good for you and again the price is incredible and if you go on our link butcherbox.com slash mind pump on that link we have an awesome offer you can get free ribeyes new york strip steaks filet mignons in every order included for free for a year plus 20 bucks and you can get $20 off your first box again it's butcherbox.com slash mind pump here comes the show our first caller is kyle from british columbia welcome back dude what's up kyle hey guys thanks for taking me back you got it i got an up perfect i got an update for you guys let's go dude all right so uh the last time we had spoken i just finished my first round of anabolic and i just switched to time and because of that i got much stronger during my first round because i was getting used to the bar and getting used to the free weights so you guys suggested that i repeat anabolic now that i'm adjusted to see how much strength i can actually gain now that i'm all leveled out excuse me so i've still been working on how to properly fuel myself during this time as well i had taken your advice in our last conversation to up my protein currently i'm hitting about 160 to 170 grams per day some days a little more my low days which happen mostly on weekends just because i'm out with the family most of the time would be about 150 but i'm trying to fix that at the moment i'm not sure how much of a detriment that would be a couple days on the weekend like that but overall my digestion is feeling better as last time i'd spoken i was kind of getting used to eating more so that seems to be working out well now so in terms of my training i've continued to split the anabolic workouts into upper and lower like the first time i personally just enjoyed that style and it was working for my schedule there however please don't hate me because on this round i didn't follow anabolic exactly mostly due to another inspiring failure that i had experienced so essentially the part where you're supposed to lower the weight and up the reps i ended up keeping the weight heavier um because i was very motivated to lift more and the main reason why was i had my brother-in-law over and he was doing some bench press and i was spotting him he's much stronger than i am and i wasn't working out at the time but i was just hanging out and then he eventually got up to 230 and then i was like i just want to feel what this feels like i was feeling stronger a bit confident it's like i just want to see if i can do like one rep just just let me go so i tried i got it about halfway down and i needed his help to get it back up but after that just one like half lift i felt really sore uh for about two days after that and i was just super motivated to just keep going keep going i don't know if that soreness was a slight injury or if it was just muscle soreness but um throughout my training of anabolic i kept it as heavy as i could um just adding like two more pounds to the bar try to do that on the last set and i did still get stronger but i don't know if my approach was wrong or how much of a detriment that was um but personally i just got really into just trying to lift more and more throughout this round i really just found it uh super motivating super fun i don't know what it is it's just like adding two more weights just makes my day or two more pounds makes my day feel so much better i don't know why but it's just a personal um fulfillment throughout the day so um that was my training um but overall throughout this round i'm overall very happy with my results and i really truly appreciate all the help you guys have given me i feel the strongest i've ever been um i've learned a ton about strength training and keep improving my eating with your guys advice to sum up my results after this round i certainly did get stronger i'm really happy with my results and i'm really happy with my results and i'm really i'll share my numbers in a second here i improved my digestion um i hit some new tough goals i set for myself just for fun uh like pull-ups and doing some rope climb stuff i really have never been able to do those very well but i'm actually able to do 10 pull-ups now i can do some rope climb which is a fun little thing um and i've just overall increased my main lift so my numbers went from my bench before was 155 but now it's up to 165 um my deadlift went from 165 to 200 uh overhead press i managed to do one rep of 100 pounds which was a big achievement for myself because i've always kind of struggled with that one particularly my pull-ups got up to 10 which has been a lifetime goal for me so very happy with that my body weight i've increased i'm up to 73.5 kilograms from 70 kilograms before so i've put on another three kilograms and um yeah so those are my overall results i got a couple questions in terms of um nutrition and training um so i can start with whatever you guys prefer well first i just want to say you killed it yeah yeah so 90 days you gained uh six pounds well about about a little over six pounds of of muscle you actually look a little leaner in your picture so it's probably more than that i think you might have lost a little body fat in the process your strength went through the roof this was all in the course of 90 days which is phenomenal i want to get clarity too on that on the strength because i think you got stronger than you think you got because if i heard you correctly as you progress through maps anabolic which starts in a low rep phase then goes to moderate reps then goes to high reps you increased weight all the way through that you lowered weight or reps right no he he lifted his weight he increased weight because he's did you think that he didn't know he didn't follow the protocol of the reps no he didn't follow the protocol the program of lowering the weight and increasing the reps yeah but so so you kept the weight the same and you kept the reps lower reps yes that's right like i kept adding weight progressively but i kept the reps like um on my main that's like bench press especially i was around like the five five to seven reps okay yeah yeah so i was like i thought you you increased the reps and the weight no so you yeah so you're like phase one you're holding your whole thing yeah you your strength went through the roof and you gained uh uh i would guess based off your picture Closer to 7 to 8 pounds of lean body mass Through that whole period of time We could have ate a lot more calories Yeah that's it Eat more Watch what happens Okay Sounds like he would do well with Yeah you would do really well with power lift Or PPL or upper lower I think any of those programs would crush for you With higher calories You're going to keep building dude You'll probably gain another If you bump your calories effectively Follow some good programming I think within 90 days You could probably gain another 5 to 8 pounds of lean body mass Wow That's awesome Like I'm hearing your guys initial response here In terms of eating more calories I feel like that's probably my biggest That was actually my main question Because I've started to notice Like I'm eating the same But however now Which has never happened before Like in the evening after dinner I'm getting hungry again And I'm just like So it's like I think I just need to overall Eat more throughout the day And that'll alleviate Yeah You got to listen to that Kyle Yeah your metabolism Yeah you got to listen to that When you feel that way Especially when you're eating good You're eating clean right We're not eating foods that increase appetite So you're eating good food Whole foods And you're lifting weights like you are And you feel that appetite increase That's a good signal That means your body's trying to grow more And build more muscle You not feeding it Depriving it Is going to slow your progress down You feed it You're going to build more muscle Yep Cool Yeah yeah Okay You did great though You did great I mean really good That's the only critique Is like we could have ate more Yeah That's it Okay So literally go back Do it again But do it Follow maybe upper lower Follow MAPS power lift And this time feed more Listen to that Fuel it I would go up another 400 calories at least Yeah Okay Excellent That's actually how much I've been Kind of calculating my snacking To overcompensate that hunger So yeah I'll just add that throughout the day Yep Excellent Yeah dude Killing it Yeah One question Just in terms of I've sometimes noticed So I wanted to start adding A little bit of mobility To either the beginning Or the end of my workouts Because Sure The one thing I noticed Was like sometimes When I'm in like a plank position Or even when curling I noticed I had like a tight Yeah Pain here in my shoulder So I started doing Just like against the wall Like the shoulder Up and down dealies And that actually Alleviated it For quite a while But then I kind of Stopped doing that Yep And then I noticed it Coming back So So here's why that happened Kyle Okay So the mobility helps But you didn't listen to us And you stayed low rep Yes There's always a consequence For not doing the right No I'm serious I'm not You know all joking aside Yeah Staying a low rep Heavy for too long That'll start happening Yeah So That And also the lesson is You should do that Before every bench day Like so before you do A pressing movement You should prime with that Always Always Especially If you are going to Not adhere And you're not You're going to lift Heavy longer So you should do that No matter what But to Sal's point If you would have Followed the program You probably wouldn't have Noticed that as much Because you probably Would have phased out Of the really heavy lifting Does it mean that We don't all In here in this room Do the same thing too Sometimes where I'm feeling Hey I want to stay Lifting heavy for longer That's right But you bet your ass When I'm doing that I'm putting in the work On the mobility stuff Or else I pay for it We feel it Yeah and this is why too We end up like Recommending sometimes To bridge You know And take a break And do Symmetry So we can You know Address a lot of these Joint issues For stability And control there So you know It might be something To consider After you get through You know Your next phase Of your block program Kyle how many of our Programs do you have Is it just anabolic That you got I got anabolic Suspension I got prime And prime pro And I got MAPS 15 Okay good So I'm going to have Doug put together A package for you Of the programs That we think Would be best for You and we're going To discount The crap out of them So if you want to get The next year Of programming set up We'll send that to you And then if you want To sign up You'll save a ton To Justin's point Having symmetry Or performance Or both And a power lift Those three programs And what you already have You're set for life On those And should just Make it a habit Of when you notice Things like you notice Like that That's a good time Follow symmetry The next program I'm going to do Symmetry or performance Something that's more Mobility focused Unilateral focused That'll help Then you can get back To the To the heavy lifting And power lifting And just kind of Toggle back and forth We typically recommend Once a year Somebody does Either symmetry Or performance That typically Addresses all those issues And then feed more Okay Eat more Supplement tip for you If you If you see that You're challenged a lot On the weekends To push those Proteins You're somebody Who would do well With like Keon The Central amino acids Knowing that You're not hitting Your optimal protein On those days You could take Some of those That would help You just put it In your water Yep Just drink I'm having some right now So that's something That I would recommend To somebody who knows They have a hard time Always consistently Hitting protein Adding that While we're trying to build Is only going to help The process Totally And then yeah Dude stay the course That's it dude Feed that appetite Good job man Yep Perfect Well thank you guys So much Like honestly The last Like through you guys Advice on these calls I've made more progress Than my whole life So it's been Very helpful I really appreciate it You got more You got more Good results coming dude Yeah keep it Keep us posted I love seeing the updates You're killing it Awesome Will do Thanks guys Alright Kyle Take it easy I think what would be A good program package For him would be Symmetry Upper lower And power lift Yeah Would be a good Good three Cause he's already Got prime and prime pro To switch through Yeah I mean predictable And you know This is good for people To watch because He said it He's had better results Last 90 days Than he had in his whole life And it wasn't For lack of trying This is the thing It's not for lack of trying You're just You're doing this On hard mode You're trying to dig A massive hole With a spoon And we're offering you A backhoe By doing things The right way And you'll notice Again Not to point out His folly But just He went his own way In a small way By not phasing his programs And kind of paid the price He felt some pain Right And so You know Our programming is written Specifically the way it's written Yeah to avoid it Because this is ideal And this will give you The best Kind of long term Success and results But He's got another Seven pounds of muscle He'll gain Also a big thing to point out For the audience That can see That actually can see The video And see the pictures It's really clear That He gained weight But he looks like he's leaner Which always tells me That we could have ate more That's right Right It's like he was He needed to lose weight He was already lean Yeah exactly So he And then on top That was before So just seeing his pictures I would have said that And then he goes Man I noticed at night I was hungry So that's a clear sign The body's trying to grow Trying to build muscle You Ignoring that signal Because you're afraid You're going to get fat Or put body fat on Will only hinder your progress That's right Feeding that signal Especially if you make good choices Like that's My kind of rule for myself is And this is how I don't count calories On a regular basis Is just Man if I'm If I'm lifting consistently I'm eating whole foods And you're hungry And I'm hungry And I I did it last night Last night I got up At ten o'clock at night She was like What are you doing? I went downstairs I'm like I'm hungry I went downstairs I went down And I literally had What was prepped meal For me to eat today For lunch Which was my ground beef Mushroom and onion And rice meal And had a full meal And so And so my rule is As long as it's a Healthy balanced choice Like that And I'm hungry I'm lifting I'm eating whole foods Feed Feed That's my body telling me It needs to build muscle Our next caller is Justin from California What's up Justin? What's happening? What's up guys? How are you? Good man How can I help you? How are you guys doing? Good dude Yeah so I'm So I'm kind of looking For some guidance So For backstory Like in my email That I preface with I'm in law enforcement And I feel like This is kind of unique For a lot of people That are in law enforcement That are looking at Health and nutrition wise Because I know How important sleep is To gaining and losing weight Gaining and losing Muscle mass So kind of looking For some guidance on that Because you know When I work my night shifts I'm working three or four Nights a week Twelve hour shifts So I'm getting maybe Four or five hours On a good night of sleep And I know that's Completely detrimental To Trying to gain lean muscle mass And lose weight So Looking for some guidance On that And just how to Minimize my Habit of overtraining Because I know I do that all the time Yeah great question dude We've definitely worked We've worked a lot With law enforcement And first responders And people with these Kinds of Kind of schedules The main thing You need to understand Around this Justin Because it's a big deal Okay so Having a Sleep schedule Like yours Where you're not getting Optimal sleep Or you're getting Way below Optimal sleep Or a schedule That constantly shifts Your circadian rhythm Sometimes people Will work nights And then try to make up For it You know on the days That they're not working Type of deal The main thing to understand Is your body's tolerance For stress Which includes exercise Is far lower Than what it would be If you had ideal sleep That's the main thing To understand So overtraining Is a lot easier For someone like you Way easier Like way Like significantly easier And so If you apply too much Exercise stress You're just gonna burn out At best You'll just Spin your tires In the dirt Really not move anywhere So The workouts For someone like you Are Absolute minimal Now that doesn't mean You're not active So people sometimes Confuse it too It's good to be active Every day You know walking And moving You don't want to sit down All day long But workouts themselves For someone like you Is Typically looks like A MAPS 15 protocol And that's it You're not going to You're not doing anything more than like a couple lifts a day and even on some days you're skipping because you're tired to tailor it even more for for you and i love uh with my uh clients that have shifts like you do uh i would invest if you don't already have one like an aura ring or a fitbit that tracks sleep for you and we're using that a boy yes i'm i'm doubled up okay okay so like and that's and that is what's i'm using that and how i feel right to help me gauge what that workout if i even have a workout looks like that day so you know let's say it's one of those days where you got horrible you score a 50 or a 60 on your your night of sleep that might be the day i don't i don't get a lift in that day i just walk do something more recuperative you know and then the next day i get more optimal 70 75 i'm gonna go do my maps 15 workout then i have a day later where i didn't have work i actually get a full day off got a great night's rest i score a seven 75 85 90 i'm like oh you know i'm gonna do i'm gonna put the two maps 15 day the maps 15 day i missed in today's messaging together and work out so i'll do four exercises that's it that day so that's how i would modify for someone like you a map 15 would be the protocol i'm never doing more than everything in that in that week on days where i get incredible sleep i might do a two-day stack on days that i get less than optimal i'm either doing nothing or i'm doing just the two exercises that's it moderate intensity now i want to add something uh justin because i you know i see your email so there's a lot of information in your email yeah uh yeah and um should i should i touch on any of that i don't know if you guys want me to or not i mean i can go through it and you're so you are a classic uh kind of overtrainer which you kind of mentioned so absolutely yeah so you crossfit competitively you taught it for 10 years uh that alone tells me quite a bit one more rep on your hat yeah there's that too you're also i'm a walking stereotype uh , maybe i maybe i wouldn't let you do a double day actually maybe i make you stick to that. Well here's the issue is like my thing that i try to gauge it off of because i try to track uh you know what my hrv is my sleep score and all that and i can get a sleep uh score of like you know 70% off of four and a half hours sleep and my hrv is 180 so i feel good to go but i know realistically like for some reason i feel like that's skewed because i know i should be getting it six to eight hours every night sure yeah so that's why i like let me touch on that for me to gauge personally. No no let me touch on that so uh and you're also you run three to four days a week about 20 to 35 miles a week and you're also training for a marathon so oh my god so that's over that's over oh you're not doing the marathon okay okay so here's what has i still run but that part's over so here's what happens and and some people just are more resilient than others you're probably one of those people yeah yeah but how you feel now is not how you potentially could feel right okay also uh how old are you justin 31 okay here's the other thing i'm going to talk about is how you feel now. thing cumulative stress is a thing and so so either we start to shift in a direction that's more appropriate and better and you'll know because you'll get stronger and you'll feel better and you have more energy or you you hit a wall that hits so hard that you're forced and it typically looks like injury and hormones crashing uh one or the other or both by the way have you had your hormones tested a while back maybe like six months ago everything seemed to be in the normal rate range so it wasn't too crazy yeah he's resilient yeah so do you know what normal was because i know the normal range is between 200 to a thousand on testosterone uh i think my testosterone was right around 700 good yeah good so i i would scale everything way down yeah and then what you'll notice is better performance this the gauge that you should use is your performance not your tolerance so i know hrv all that stuff some people are more resilient uh so those measurements are going to look better on you than they will with someone else but that doesn't mean you can be much better but i can tell you this with that little sleep and this much exercise if we cut our exercise down what you'll notice almost immediately is an improvement in performance almost immediately you'll feel stronger and faster and that's how you know you're going the right direction max 15 is all you need no more that's it for your for your lifting that's it that is it no matter how and it's going to be so hard for somebody like you because you're going to feel like it's not enough it is more than that's what i was going to get at yes it's going to feel you're going to do it and by the way just so you know like literally i was having this conversation with two of my best friends this weekend who do not have a job like you they're just we're all the same age we're in our 40s and i i see how they're training and i'm like dude and i so my thing that i started with them this week is i'm texting them what i'm doing which is two exercises when i go lift because they're always asking me man how do you what do you do i'm like i do way less than what you guys do you guys have been lifting for our whole lives you've been lifting for a long time you don't need to do nearly that much to hang on to your muscle and if you want to build with all the stuff you got going on you definitely need to reduce your volume intensity and it's going to feel like you're not doing much but like sal said what you'll see if you just stick to that you trust the process in two weeks you'll see strength go up you'll see your strength you'll get you'll get stronger and that's your indication of you're doing the appropriate amount now yeah you'll see you'll see in a week so because you're a police because you're in law enforcement you want to maintain some certain uh amount of athletic ability so maps 15 with a couple days a week of running is here's what you'll notice okay i'm gonna i'll tell you right now what'll happen you'll get faster and you're running and stronger and you're lifting okay and you'll and you'll you'll know this within one or two weeks and if that's what happens you're in the right you're going the right direction okay and you got nothing to lose by the way so you could try it for two weeks and then go back to the crazy stuff that you're doing but it will you'll see like i said i was just so different when you recover fully yeah i was gonna say for me it's gonna be the mental battle of yes not feeling like i'm feeling i'm not doing enough that's that's how it is for me like i you know training it's not diagnosed it's self-diagnosed of by dysmorphia so i feel like i have to put in extra work and do all this extra stuff because if i don't i'm gonna you know i grew up as an overweight kid so yeah i feel like i'm gonna go back that route if i don't do more so that's the hardest if you justin if this is really important and you and you and you're at a place now where you're like i'm committed to making this change you know that about yourself um it may be a worthwhile investment for you to do like our concierge or just you meet with the coach once a month that's it once a month they check in and they're basically going over your nutrition going over your training just accountability piece not like you need someone to tell you what to do workout wise but it's more of like i need to have somebody who's reminding me that this i'm on the right path um very minimal investment to do that and someone like you who's as advanced as you are you're going to be able to be able to do that and i think it's like perfect it's not full-blown training where you're with a coach all the time it's just once a month you're checking in and they're kind of modifying your program and you guys are going back and forth do they also work with you on nutrition and programming or just checking in all both no mostly yeah they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna so for example like if i if we were working with one of our coaches they're gonna set you up on maps 15 and they're gonna be like this is kind of what it should look like through the week you get your first call your first check-in call and hey how are things going you're gonna feedback this i noticed this and then they're gonna go okay this is what i want you to do you're gonna drop this day add this here let's bump your calories to this they're gonna modify like that and then send you on your way again they're gonna come back report again oh man i know the strength is going up this okay great let's hold the line stay the course this is what you're they're gonna keep tweaking it for you and you just follow it and then you let them know how you're feeling and they're gonna adjust nutrition and adjust workouts okay yeah um one last thing this is more just for uh you know anyone that might be out there that's been doing this for a long time might be a shift work kind of uh perspective is to help with sleep when you are working those crazy long shifts or overnight shifts i mean you know i take magnesium you know have blackout curtains uh sleep mask all these other stuff do you guys have any other tips to help improve sleep for people switching your circadian rhythm so often uh is where melatonin actually has benefit okay so it creates a shift your circadian rhythm will adjust faster by taking melatonin you can take it every night you can take it every night you can take it every night and you can take it every night you can take it every night religiously okay yeah all right yeah look at look them up legion lunar and as far as the mental part is concerned justin you don't want to take a ton of that shit you don't want to take a ton of that shit but you can take that at night it's my i take it every night religiously okay yeah all right yeah look at look them up legion lunar and then as far as the mental part is concerned justin yeah i don't want to take a ton of that shit i'm justin um focus on the objective measures of strength speed and performance that'll that'll get you over the mental part right out because you'll start to see it you're like man i'm faster i'm stronger and that typically gets people out of their head with the like i'm not doing enough it's because you see the results energy increase yeah that's where you want possibly it depends on how well you know yourself if you if you know that you really struggle body dysmorphia and you know you're challenged with this sometimes this is where you outsource it so well the challenge is you'll get stronger and feel better and then that'll make you think yes you'll get stronger exactly exactly that's the challenge yes but like i said within a week or two dude you'll you'll see it you'll see improvements in those things stick to the programming though trust us like it's you don't you don't need more than that that's more than enough for a guy your experience and that what you do with your sleep like you you got to stay there and you'll see way better results way better results okay yeah cool all right justin thanks for calling in man all right dude thanks guys i appreciate it yeah have a good rest of the day guys all right man you got it yeah that's uh you know and if i hopefully he heeds this because he's 31 so he's still young um obviously uh his body has a lot of resilience some people are really resilient i think he's handled more the fact that he's he can score 75 Five on four hours sleep is beyond me. So he's, you know, and he's somewhat resilient. Maintain testosterone, too. Yeah, but it's what'll happen if he stays down that path. Oh, you're right, he's 31. Major injury or. He's barely out of his 20s. See, when you do that, you're at 40. Yeah, I did crazy things in my 20s and early 30s, too. Now, I would have gotten way better results had I not. That's the thing to understand, is that you can get away with it, but it doesn't mean it's ideal. Nowhere near that. Our next caller is Casey from North Carolina. Hey, welcome back. How you doing, Casey? Hello. Hey, guys. Good to see you again. Yeah, what's happening? Yeah, I'll jump right into it. I've got kind of just some updates, what's happened, questions I've had along the way, and maybe some questions for what do I do next. Sure, let's go. So I just want to give you guys a huge thank you. I think just you guys doing podcast calls and callers is a fantastic aspect to your show, but I resonate with a lot of people. But this, you guys taking the time to really, really dive in with me, like helped me a ton. I've had a lot of people give me missed messages, if you will. And so it was nice to kind of have a solid way to go. So just some background. I was with you guys a little while ago regarding lifestyle changes and living with Hashimoto's. So again, goal was to simply just feel healthy, feel strong with the added bonus of looking like I work out. Over the years, I received a lot of mixed messages, messages around diet, workout, all of it just being not working, if you will. So during our call, I was incredibly grateful that you guys recommended MAPS 15, and I've really enjoyed it. I've loved it, honestly. Not only the program itself, I felt strong with it, but it like just helped me relax a little bit. It was a quick workout, whether it was something I could do down in my gym, at my home, or get over to the gym. But it's like it relieved a little bit of stress, which was nice, especially as I went into the summer months. Summer Casey is a little bit able to do more of that, to get there every day. But even now that I've gotten back to school, we've been back two weeks, that it's just been easy to do. So that's been great. I really, really appreciated you guys giving me that program. So I went back and listened to our episode, and I took what you said to heart, Adam. I really appreciated you being like, in love, you say, not winning the weekend. So I zoned in, I did that. It was probably right after 4th of July. I listened to our episode and was like, okay, I can do this. And I think maybe 4th of July, maybe a few days after, I was back home with family and really didn't have any of the dairy, any of the gluten. But I know like we were, your advice was like lock in on the gluten, kind of cut that out, act almost as if you're allergic. But took what you guys had to say to heart. I really appreciate it. Like appreciated that. Cause I think it gave me this like pathway of like, no cheats are going to kind of off, off rail you. What else? So since then I have been gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free, alcohol-free. And it sounds absolutely terrible, but it's really not been bad. Honestly, I've had less cravings. I've noticed just mental clarity and yeah, overall those kinds of improvements have been nice. So into it though, I think with the programming doing like the diet aspects, I just haven't seen any of the scale change. And I just want kind of your input. I didn't expect to go in losing 30, 40 pounds in the last 90 days, but I was hoping to maybe get on the scale here recently, just knowing I was going to talk to you guys and be like, okay, I'm down, down some weight and haven't seen anything. Haven't seen any, any on the scale and just like overall, like how my clothes fit, what I usually go off of how I feel in the mirror. It's just not exactly where I would like to be still. So just questions throughout what I've had throughout what I'm going to go through. Hopefully after this call is maps 15, run it again. Where would you have me go next? Ideally, I'd love to see what you say for like the next nine months, like to put a calendar year, together, like what that would look like. Yeah. I wondered about sauna sessions. I wondered if that was too much, if that is just going to override some of the, the, the things that I'm doing just as I'm in recovery mode, is that too much? And then something that has popped up recently with my functional health practitioner, she mentioned the GLP one. I know you guys just did a podcast on it. And so I've got just kind of curiosity. If like, working on inflammation, which I feel like that's what kind of I'm working on. Would that be something you guys would suggest? Okay. So I want to, I want to back you up real quick though, on the, the frustrating part with the scale, just curious. Cause I know you've listened to the show for a while. Do you think that we would have asked you, what did the scale say? No, not at all. We would ask it. How's your digestion feel? How does inflammation feel? How is strength in the gym? How is all, those are the things that we would have asked you. And yeah, sounds like a lot of that stuff has been doing pretty damn good. Yeah. So it's true. And so, and, and so you've made incredible progress, but we, we get so attached to this scale and mirror and then allow that to dictate, oh, I did good or didn't do good. You did phenomenal. You've made some major changes. You've seen the benefits of it and you're starting to make a major lifestyle change. We are heading in the right direction. Yeah. 90 days is a short period of time, but I just want to remind you that aesthetic changes are downstream from improvements and things like energy, health, inflammation, and strength. Yeah. So as those improve over time, the aesthetic changes follow. It has to. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that's the, and the cool thing about that is something like strength is objective. So it's like, I can look at it and be like, well, I'm lifting more. I'm definitely moving in the right directions. The scale, uh, I mean, it's objective number, but it doesn't tell us body composition and the mirror. It's very subjective. Uh, so, so all that stuff. So aesthetics follows those other things. Okay. So keep focusing on those and the aesthetic changes, uh, tend to follow. Um, as far as programming is concerned, I like the mass 15 protocol for you. I remember you saying you were a teacher, you're in the school, you're now. So, um, I don't care which ones you follow. Uh, but what I'll do is I'll put together a 15 package for you if you don't have any more and we'll discount the crap out of it. I'll give it for you and it will set you up for the next year. Um, so you can just follow one after another, um, and you'll be set up. Um, what was the last year? Oh, GLP. Yeah. So your functional medicine. So off the label, uh, a lot of functional medicine practitioners are using GLPs at a really, really low dose, what they'll call a microdose because again, this is off label and this is a lot of anecdote. Now there is research going in this direction, but I can't point to any yet because it's not established. But I do know a lot of practitioners who are getting, who are having positive results with autoimmune and inflammatory issues by micro dosing things like teres epitome. I've personally seen it. So, uh, that's all I can tell you. So now they're your functional medicine practitioner. They're the ones working with you on this stuff. So, uh, you know, I would talk to them about that. The only thing I would caution you on is going on too high of a dose, which will crush your appetite and could throw things in, which would show you movement on the scale, but would also move. It's backwards, uh, with what we're trying to accomplish because here's what it looks like. Okay. We keep doing the right things and I think you're doing phenomenal. You keep getting stronger, health, getting better, energy is getting better. The fat loss is more of a snowball effect. It starts to happen after. Okay. Okay. If we just start to cut calories now, we'll see some movement on the scale, but then we'll have this real hard plateau. Uh, and then you'll have to go back to what you're doing now and reverse and do all that stuff. So I'm, I don't know. Have you, have you heard me talk a little bit about, uh, me using teres epitope right now? Well, to be honest, it's kind of, you guys, it was a couple of weeks ago, maybe now. And it was something you said, Adam, that like you had used it in just micro dosing sense and felt like the inflammation had decreased. And what was interesting is probably the week prior functional health practitioner was like, well, we're not seeing any, I don't know. It was kind of disheartening, but her, hers was like, we're going to put you on a GLP one. If we don't see any progress, I'm like, that's not really what I want to do at all. But then I heard you guys mentioning in the micro dose sense of like, Hey, it could find like some benefits. Um, but that was kind of it. I didn't really do any, my own research or anything. So let me share like the way I've approached it myself personally. And again, this is my own personal story. So this is not me giving you medical advice or telling you what to do. It's just like how I'm using it. So I'm, I found for my dosage, I'm like that 0.5 to one unit, which is like, it's not quite a micro dose. It's not even, uh, half of the way a starting dose would be. It's like in between that, that number. And what makes me decide whether I take 0.5 or one unit for myself is I, I need to be eating enough. And so I know that if I take sometimes, I remember I tried one point, uh, or 10, 10 units, a little over 10 units, and it crushed my appetite too much to where it was really hard for me to hit my protein intake. And so I, I backed off. So we, we, we don't want to happen. So your dose is going to look different than mine. We're, different completely, whatever she decide, if you do decide do this whatever she sets you off on if you notice you can't even hit your protein intake because it's crushing your appetite it's too much and you need to talk to her so that and that's how i'm because i i'm noticing the the uh anti-inflammatory benefits big time i can see it in my face i can see it on my psoriasis and so that's what i'm really enjoying but i don't want it to crush my appetite to where i can't get my meal my whole food meals because then i'll just lose weight on the scale and i'll lose muscle so um so that's that's how i've landed on my dosage and so if you are going to use it that's how i would want you to also use it if you were a client of mine i'd say listen i'm okay with you because because of the autoimmune stuff i have definitely noticed that benefit and if you get similar benefits from it i'm pro it so long as you can hit those adequate protein numbers every day consistently and you can lift and you have the energy to lift weights then i'm okay with it but if you notice it suppress that appetite and you're like i'm having a really hard time hitting my protein day i don't like it yep okay because i think that's where i was kind of at is like i don't really want to use it at all but i've heard enough where you guys have talked about it a couple other people in my life they've mentioned it of like how it can kind of help with that inflammation and sometimes that's all it just that's all i need is that to come off and then even yeah the bigger snowball effect of feeling better happens go go with with your with the functional medicine practitioner so that's the person who's managing all that that's why i would turn to for that uh but again you know off label people are using it in that way with their practitioners and some of the people we've had on the show talked about it who are experts in the field so yeah just pay attention to the main thing i said just if you're and let her know so whatever i have no idea what she's going to start your dosage at but whatever she starts it at if you struggle with that protein that's a big red flag and tell her and say hey i'd like to try a lower dose are you okay with that and then most likely probably cut whatever she gave it to you in half and it'll probably land you at a better place okay yeah that works perfect because i think that was kind of where she was headed next and knowing that i wanted a little more information maybe um i think the only other thing was just as i'm in kind of this recovery mode i feel like i will be for maybe a little while is there any other things you guys would recommend i know i kind of asked about the sauna sessions is that something to to do is there any other things you guys would recommend i know i kind of asked about is i know red light therapy i've kind of talked about but that was kind of the other thing as i went through the past three months i'm like is there any i love sauna yes i love sauna for you sauna is great don't go in there to to be a hero you just kind of sweat and don't go crazy with pushing it sometimes people with thyroid issues uh have issues with uh with temperature uh regulation uh make sure you drink a lot of water throw some electrolytes in there um so but otherwise you'll improve you know it's good for endothelial health it's good for vo2 max inflammation red light therapy is totally different it's not a stress uh on the body it accelerates healing a lot of different ways um and aesthetically speaking red light therapy is very obvious so you'll see the difference with red light therapy but you won't get the performance benefits or the health benefits like you would have a sauna so but both of them would be great to add yep i love adding that to your routine yes yes love it okay i've done yeah i've done the sauna for a while and something in me i was like i hope this is okay i think i've just gotten to a point where now i question everything yeah no you're fine yeah what you don't want to do is go in there like you're trying to beat your best time yeah yeah it's not a workout yeah okay yep cool that's it um yeah that's really all i have i really appreciate you guys sending me maps 15 i think i was just yeah what i needed and you guys advice and what you guys do i just really appreciate it you're doing good you're about 30 you're about uh 60 to 90 days from seeing a big tiger body responds so stay the course that's what i would guess yeah i would guess about 60 to 90 days so just keep staying consistent keep focused on getting stronger that's the main thing we're looking at cool i really appreciate it gives me a lot to go with so thank you again you got it thanks casey all right bye guys bye-bye she by the way do you guys remember what she looked like on the last call yes she looks trying to remember way different yeah like healthier feel like yeah healthier more energy yes yes 100 i mean and again i want to remind people like aesthetic changes are downstream from improvements in health and energy they don't show up right away although aesthetic changes do show up right away they're just not the kind that people tend to pay attention to where the guy's digging for gold and it's like right there he stops but it's like i know this is in fact we talked about this off air last uh last week i can just through experience i can look at someone's face and i can tell like this person's overstressed and overdoing it totally and those aesthetic changes are visible everybody you can see it on her yeah from the last time we met she doesn't even the scale not to not to mention that i mean if it sounded like all other markers were positive right and doing great uh i actually don't want the scale to have moved no yeah because what what i don't care about this because probably what actually did happen was she probably actually lost a couple pounds of fat and gained a couple pounds of muscle and it's not a big enough number for her to go like whoa radical change like everybody notices but it's enough to be like we are heading the right path she had to get healthy okay she had to get healthy first and she's doing it and she cut out gluten which was all i asked but she did all that other stuff all of them let's go yeah she's gonna kill it look if you like mind pump you got to come find us on instagram it's mind pump media thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgb super bundle includes maps anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic you nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on itunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is mind pump